The year end report of a group called Index on Censorship was just published, and being a journalist can get you beaten up, harassed by mobs and even killed. Here’s the picture The Guardian used at the top of the story:

The caption:A Donald Trump supporter at a rally in Minneapolis, Minnesota, makes his feelings about journalists known. Photograph: Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

It’s been common to add Trump to any story you can, so I read the report:

During the third quarter of 2016, four journalists were killed; 54 incidents of physical assault were reported; 107 media professionals were arrested; 150 were detained and released; 112 reports of intimidation, which includes psychological abuse, sexual harassment, trolling/cyberbullying and defamation, were made; journalistic work was censored or altered 29 times; and media professionals were blocked from covering a story in 89 cases.

Sounds pretty bad.

None of the examples in the report were from the United States, or even the UK, where the Guardian is published. Searching in the report for the word Trump, I got two instances of the word “trumped up.”

So, why is Trump in the story at all?

With a marked increase in attacks in Europe, long considered a bastion of press freedom, the latest research does not reflect increased violence in Asia or the US, which has seen an increase in assaults and abuse during a highly charged US election during which reporters were put in pens by President-elect Donald Trump.

The cage accusation involves the press areas in the rallies during the campaign. I don’t remember the reporters being injured or killed. Forgive me if I’ve missed some stories.

I do know there were people hurt in anti-Trump riots, but that’s because they were attacked by thugs. Or as the Guardian says, there was a “…a marked increase in assaults.”

KTLA.com

So why is a Trump t-shirt a prominent feature of a story about people being killed in Turkey, Ukraine and Russia?

3 Responses to “Let’s squeeze Trump into another story about Ukraine, okay?”

It’s so much fun seeing those eejits hyperventilating over a shirt that has been around for years (a decade maybe?). Misha is finding it amusing and I remember when he first sold them, loooooong before Trump came on the political scene. I think he’s contemplating putting them back up on his Café Press store.

Another reason that they lie is because they actually have achieved double-think. They have been lying for so many generations that they do not even know when they are lying. The Guardian gave a story about a reporter being beaten up in the US. He was beaten up by a mostly peaceful bunch of anti-Trump “protestors,” but they showed a picture of a Trump supporter. The Guardian coupled that with a plea that president have no privacy even when he has dinner with his family because reporters are privileged and have an inviolable right and duty to report on the president’s every private moment. We all remember how the press reported on Kennedy’s sexual escapades.

The main source of death for journalists related to their journalism is political violence, including one incident in the Philippines where a candidate tried to use them as a shield, only to have an entire convoy executed. The only reason we know the details is the central government had a helicopter flying overhead at just the right time to see an attempted mass burial. The journalists don’t think Trump is that kind of guy, or they wouldn’t write about him. But they do write as though he was. They get points with their base for speaking truth to power.

Except, they aren’t speaking truth. And in the true meaning of that phrase, Trump will never be power.